


This language spans universes and still you defy it

by laughingpineapple



Category: Myst Series
Genre: Banter, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Language Barrier, Mysterium inside joke, Yuletide Treat, mentions of past animal cruelty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are, probably, enough words in D'ni to convey how much I want to hit you with a chair, but some achievements truly transcend it. What happens in Noloben, stays in Noloben.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This language spans universes and still you defy it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Capella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capella/gifts).



> Content warning: it's not a graphic depiction by any stretch of the imagination and nothing gruesome happens during the story, but it does feature the corpse of an animal.
> 
> ...I may have gotten carried away with the serious lead-up to the inside joke, but they're fun to write?

This journey is one of mutual understanding, of smoothing and sharpening their companionship toward a goal that should be too important to be jeopardized by bickering and bloodlines.

When the Bahro lead them to Noloben, Yeesha wonders whether the choice of the Age is meant for its former inhabitant and how much, in turn, this lesson is for her eyes only: seeing the new chosen at work has been a constant exercise in humility and the traces of the man's life in this forgotten Age add more and more sinister layers to his character. Even in the fresh wake of her failure to free the Tablet, she could pride herself, and damn herself, on the thought that she had been deigned worthy. It had to account for some degree of capacity and virtue. Years later, seeing her efforts put on the same pedestal as this buffoon gives her pause.

Now his laboratory shows new horrors. Proof, if proof was needed, that his pointed, prideful D'ni words, etched again and again in his otherwise jolly talks, were not empty. Esher keeps her far from certain rooms – it matters little, she will find her way in later, when the old man sleeps, he can scoff at the Grower but he should know by now that walls cannot contain her.

But even what he cares not to hide is death and torture. Yeesha leans on a table where the charred, shrivelled up corpse of a bird is left to rot. Some feathers must have fallen to the ground before the creature met its end – Yeesha remembers a similar plumage on the water birds out on the shore. Poor soul.

“What”, she points, “is this.”

“That? A study on behavioral analysis.”

“In the afterlife?”

“I never got to the study proper.” Esher waves his arm, banishing the very thought. “The wretched creatures were all wet. Do you know how much of my exile here was spent fighting away the dampness? The fogs that cover this whole island? I set up a dielectric heating field to at least get the seawater off their filthy backs.” And got some settings wrong, self-evidently.

 

“So you-” Yeesha pauses for breath, realizing she lacks the words to express herself in D'ni, already feeling Esher's pureblood contempt prickle on her skin. Her tattoos crumple into a frown. His condescension every time she gets an accent wrong (as if he is one to talk), let alone forgets a word, can go take a link to a lava field and set itself on fire. Loading her own voice with her own brand of contempt, she switches to the language of her grandmother, of common sense and the moral anchor of a simple life under a simple sun.

“So, let me get this straight. In order to dry a duck. You _microwaved the duck_.”

The look of disgust on her face requires, after all, no translation.

**Author's Note:**

> ~*~ a very anonymous, very merry Yuletide! ~*~


End file.
